Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
THE DUST
We stood in a grave. A hissing, windswept, open tomb at the edge of my daddy’s back field.
At least, that was how it felt. The cursed land of Charity, Oklahoma rolled out around us as flat as Sooty, the digger’s face after old man Berringer punched his nose last summer.
Sooty didn’t say much, but he always showed up when something needed digging.
Half the world was buried so he was plenty busy.
At seventy and one years, Granma had half a century on me, but who would know it?
We stood there, shoulder to shoulder, wrapped in layers and hunched against the dirty wind.
No one would see my long, red curls or her iron gray braids.
The hazelnut brown of my eyes and the still water blue of hers were hidden in folds of fabric.
We were bundles filling with sand and sorrow with every passing moment.
Now that the preacher was gone from Charity, there was no one to speak words at a burial. Sometimes Sooty mumbled bible verses to himself, but today he stood silent as a stone. I whispered a prayer to heaven but the wind wiped it from my lips.
Sooty leaned on his shovel and covered his mouth with a damp cloth. I did the same. Granma followed suit. She’d not yet shed a tear. Did her moist handkerchief hide a quivering lip? A look of agony? I’d never know. She’d tuck it deep before she’d ever let me see it.
We all watched that hill of dirt, marveling at the dark mix of soil. That glimpse of real earth, rich and fertile as a new mother was rare in these parts. Real rare. Ever since the dust came.
Granma called them black blizzards. Granma was smart.
She’d come west from Appalachia to Oklahoma back when America’s belly was still ripe with promise and crops.
She’d brought her kitchen magic, her secrets, and her walled off heart with her.
Granma knew things others didn’t. Saw things others missed. And kept it all to herself.
I snaked a hand between my feed sack coat and wool scarf and grasped the prickling herbal bundle hanging against my breast bone. The constant pins and needles of Granma’s extra potent blend made my skin itch.
We watched that little hill of dirt, not more than a smashed nose on the face of the prairie. A few gritty eye blinks later it was gone. Swallowed by the dust. Eaten like everything in the Oklahoma panhandle. Reaped by the whirlwind as people said.
“RIP, Momma.” I reached for Granma’s hand. She jerked away from my touch as if I’d burned her. I buried my face in my scarf and cried for us both.